Reaching new customers starts with good strategy

I recently discussed understanding the value of a customer, and using that very basic metric to understand how many new customers will cause your company to achieve its revenue goals.

Now, I want to talk about creating and executing your plan.

You’ve already identified your revenue and customer acquisition targets, and analyzed the metrics so you understand how many sales personnel it will take to achieve your targets. Let’s put things in motion:

Identify accountabilities

Who (or which team) is going to oversee this project? What milestones will they be measured by?

And how is compensation to be tied to achieving these milestones?

It is critical that one clearly define these milestones and what success in achieving them means.

It might be total revenue dollars, average revenue dollars per client, total number of clients, number of client meetings; but however you define success, it must be crystal clear. The definition delineates clear accountability: goals, achieved by whom and by when.

Feedback

What metrics will be used to track progress? For example, if new salespeople need to be recruited, you will need to focus on bringing those people in to interview, and understanding how many candidates you must vet to get to an offer. After all, this will be necessary to plan for both necessary infrastructure and the timing of revenue growth. If you are just now ramping up a significant recruiting effort as part of your growth strategy, it will obviously be some months before those efforts will begin to bear fruit — and management’s expectations need to be set accordingly.

You will know from the company’s prior history the metrics that are germane to your specific situation: the number of prospects called, or called on in person per day or week, follow up meetings scheduled, etc.

These can be tracked on a regular basis to ensure that the company is hewing to the plan.

The key is that they must be impactful and easy to measure and track. The intent here is to provide meaningful information and feedback, not create cumbersome reporting processes.

Follow up meetings

With respect to follow-up, I would strongly recommend weekly meetings, probably early in the week, both among senior management responsible for the effort and within the sales team to assess progress or areas for improvement.

At these meetings, you will review the metrics that you are tracking and solicit input, problem solving, brainstorming around progress (or the lack thereof).

This is a very basic plan to get you started; as you begin to delve into the project, you will undoubtedly identify many other areas that will need to be incorporated into the effort, with specific accountabilities — “by whom, and by when” — that will be attached to the plan. (Note that this same approach can be used with any project: Just change the metrics you track and the intended goals, and you are off to the races!)

Now, it’s off to the races to achieve your growth targets!

Bruce Rector is president of The Rector Group, strategy consultants for small and medium-size businesses. To receive his weekly Business Challenge, email brector@therectorgroup.com or visit www.therectorgroup.com. Follow him on Twitter @CEOSecretWeapon.